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It wouldn't be a Bruce Willis Die Hard movie without ample destruction. And the new one, A Good Day to Die Hard, opening Thursday, lives up to the billing in a big way, especially when it comes to the wholesale crunching of some prime automobiles.

Director John Moore even has a tally. Some 132 cars were destroyed in one epic car chase which has Bruce Willis in Russia, riding a Mercedes G Class SUV roughshod over cars in traffic chasing Russian baddies who have no problems firing shoulder rockets into the oncoming cars. Cost: $11 million.

"There were 132 (cars) that could never be used again," says Moore, somewhat gleefully. "Another 518 required a lot of work. And damn right there were some good cars there. ... That's the fun of it."

"With Die Hard it's about how audacious the action is," Moore adds. "So you have to drive over a Lamborghini. An actual one. And yes it hurts me. I'm a car fanatic."

All told, it's one expensive scene playing out over several minutes and featuring some classic Willis one-liners, especially as he's literally driving over the cars.

"Someone showed me the numbers on the car chase and soup to nuts, you put it all together it was like an $11 million sequence."

John McClane (Bruce Willis) travels to Russia to visit his son Jack (Jai Courtney) only to discover he is an undercover CIA agent, and the two are quickly dragged into an underworld nuclear weapon heist.

The filmmakers got some help. The need for wrecking cars was so great, that Moore went to Mercedes for the G Class. The vehicle fits in with the Russian backdrop.

"You go to Moscow it's covered in these Mercedes, like yellow taxi cabs in New York," says Moore. "So we said 'Hey, can you help us out. Because we cannot afford to wreck all the cars that you see in Moscow. So send us some of those G wagons.' "

Several of pricey Mercedes-Benzes died in the pursuit of great stunts. More pain for Moore, especially the ones with the supercharged engines. In fact the director even was tempted to spare one of the cars when he was told he could keep it.

"And there was a moment where it was like, 'If I don't wreck it, they said I can keep it.' I really had this St.-Paul-on- the-road-to-Damascus moment."

Needless to say, he stayed true to the Gods of Destruction. "We wrecked it, I'm happy to say," says Moore. "It was like if I don't wreck it, I'm done directing."